• Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition (edited book)
    Routledge. forthcoming.
    This chapter wades into the growing discussion surrounding embodied cognition and predictive processing. After surveying a recent debate between Jakob Hohwy and Andy Clark, it articulates two outstanding issues facing discussions of compatibility. It argues that headway on these issues can be made by drawing on the resources of philosophy of science.
  •  92
    The Puzzling Resilience of Multiple Realization
    with Thomas W. Polger
    Minds and Machines 33 (2): 321-345. 2023.
    According to the multiple realization argument, mental states or processes can be realized in diverse and heterogeneous physical systems; and that fact implies that mental state or process kinds cannot be identified with particular kinds of physical states or processes. More specifically, mental processes cannot be identified with brain processes. Moreover, the argument provides a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. The multiple realization argument is widely influential, but…Read more
  •  27
    Theories of multiple realization
    American Philosophical Quarterly 57 (1): 17-30. 2020.
    Philosophers look to the realization relation as a way to make sense of the possibility that special science kinds are physical, yet not reducible to kinds in physics. A realized property fails to reduce because it can be realized in multiple ways, thus blocking its identification with lower-level properties. One prominent analysis of realization, subset realization, distinguishes multiple realizers on the basis their “left-over powers,” that is, those that don’t contribute to the individuative …Read more
  •  13
    Embodied Cognition
    Routledge. 2010.
    Embodied cognition is a recent development in psychology that practitioners often present as a superseding standard cognitive science. In this outstanding introduction, Lawrence Shapiro sets out the central themes and debates surrounding embodied cognition, explaining and assessing the work of many of the key figures in the field, including Lawrence Barsalou, Daniel Casasanto, Andy Clark, Alva Noë, and Michael Spivey. Beginning with an outline of the theoretical and methodological commitments of…Read more
  •  47
    Some philosophers have offered structural representations as an alternative to indicator-based representations. Motivating these philosophers is the belief that an indication-based analysis of representation exhibits two fatal inadequacies from which structural representations are spared: such an analysis cannot account for the causal role of representational content and cannot explain how representational content can be made determinate. In fact, we argue, indicator and structural representatio…Read more
  •  6
    Adapted Minds
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 27 85-104. 2001.
    Minds are obscure things. This is especially obvious and especially onerous to those interested in understanding the mind. One way to begin an investigation of mind, given its abstruseness, is to explore the implications of something we believe must be true of minds. This is the approach I take in this paper. Whatever uncertainties we have about the mind, it’s a safe bet that the mind is an adaptation. So, I begin with this truth about minds: minds are the product of evolution by natural selecti…Read more
  •  109
    Flesh matters: The body in cognition
    Mind and Language 34 (1): 3-20. 2019.
    Embodied cognition emphasizes the importance of the body to cognition, but what is the nature of this importance? For some advocates, the body provides a computational resource within the context of a larger cognitive system. For others, the body constrains cognition, such that differently embodied organisms will differ cognitively as well. I examine these distinct conceptions of embodiment, defending the greater interest of the second. I argue as well that judgments of the body's significance i…Read more
  •  11
    There are many who believe Moses parted the Red Sea and Jesus came back from the dead. Others are certain that exorcisms occur, ghosts haunt attics, and the blessed can cure the terminally ill. Though miracles are immensely improbable, people have embraced them for millennia, seeing in them proof of a supernatural world that resists scientific explanation. Helping us to think more critically about our belief in the improbable, The Miracle Myth casts a skeptical eye on attempts to justify belief …Read more
  •  30
    (No abstract is available for this citation).
  •  18
    Saving the phenomenal
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 5. 1999.
  •  487
    Multiple realizations
    Journal of Philosophy 97 (12): 635-654. 2000.
  •  99
    The Multiple Realization Book
    Oxford University Press UK. 2016.
    Since Hilary Putnam offered multiple realization as an empirical hypothesis in the 1960s, philosophical consensus has turned against the idea that mental processes are identifiable with brain processes, and multiple realization has become the keystone of the 'antireductive consensus' across philosophy of science. Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro offer the first book-length investigation of multiple realization, which serves as a starting point to a series of philosophically sophisticated…Read more
  •  5
    In The Bounds of Cognition, Fred Adams and Kenneth Aizawa treat the arguments for extended cognition to withering criticism. I summarize their main arguments and focus special attention on their distinction between the extended cognitive system hypothesis and the extended cognition hypothesis, as well as on their demand for a mark of the mental.
  •  104
    Mental Manipulations and the Problem of Causal Exclusion
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (3). 2012.
    Christian List and Peter Menzies 2009 have looked to interventionist theories of causation for an answer to Jaegwon Kim's causal exclusion problem. Important to their response is the idea of realization-insensitivity. However, this idea becomes mired in issues concerning multiple realization, leaving it unable to fulfil its promise to block exclusion. After explaining why realization-insensitivity fails as a solution to Kim's problem, I look to interventionism to describe a different kind of sol…Read more
  •  150
    Andy Clark's Supersizing the Mind begins as a manifesto in which the components of an embodied theory of mind are carefully moved into place, proceeds to a defense of these components from recent critical attacks, and ends with words of caution to those who would seek to extract too much from the embodied perspective. Readers unfamiliar with Clark's earlier works are likely to find the result dazzling -- an exciting, novel, and coherent conception of the mind that dares one to abandon nearly eve…Read more
  • Book Review (review)
    Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (1): 172-175. 2012.
  •  77
    Evolution Without Adaptation?
    Metascience 18 (2): 319-323. 2009.
  •  57
    Behavior, ISO functionalism, and psychology
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 25 (2): 191-209. 1994.
  •  345
    Epiphenomenalism - the do's and the don 'ts'
    In G. Wolters & Peter K. Machamer (eds.), Thinking About Causes: From Greek Philosophy to Modern physics, University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 235-264. 2007.
    When philosophers defend epiphenomenalist doctrines, they often do so by way of a priori arguments. Here we suggest an empirical approach that is modeled on August Weismann’s experimental arguments against the inheritance of acquired characters. This conception of how epiphenomenalism ought to be developed helps clarify some mistakes in two recent epiphenomenalist positions – Jaegwon Kim’s (1993) arguments against mental causation, and the arguments developed by Walsh (2000), Walsh, Lewens, and …Read more
  •  190
    Against proportionality
    with Elliott Sober
    Analysis 72 (1): 89-93. 2012.
    A statement of the form ‘C caused E’ obeys the requirement of proportionality precisely when C says no more than what is necessary to bring about E. The thesis that causal statements must obey this requirement might be given a semantic or a pragmatic justification. We use the idea that causal claims are contrastive to criticize both
  •  57
    Arguing About the Mind (edited book)
    Routledge. 2007.
    _Arguing About the Mind_ is an accessible, engaging introduction to the core questions in the philosophy of mind. This collection offers a selection of thought-provoking articles that examine a broad range of issues from the mind and body relation to animal and artificial intelligence. Topics addressed include: the problem of consciousness; the nature of the mind; the relationship between the mind, body and world; the notion of selfhood; pathologies and behavioural problems; animal, machine and …Read more
  •  42
    Responses to critics
    Philosophical Psychology 31 (3): 446-457. 2018.
    In response to points raised by our critics in this book symposium, we offer some clarifications about how to understand the role of science in assessing the multiple realization thesis. We also consider the connection between functionalism and multiple realization in the contexts of both psychological and biological sciences.
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    In defense of interventionist solutions to exclusion
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 68 51-57. 2018.
    Mental and physical causes do not competedthe presence of one does not exclude the efficacy of the other. This point is obvious from the perspective of an interventionist theory of causation, but only when this theory gets its proper due. Doubts about the interventionist justification for concluding that there is both physical and mental causation, we have argued, rest on misunderstandings of interventionism. When looking to interventions to reveal causal structures, care must be taken to consid…Read more
  •  29
    Mechanism or Bust? Explanation in Psychology
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 2016.
  •  63
    Reduction redux
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 68 10-19. 2018.
  •  1
    Representational Content in Cognitive Psychology
    Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. 1992.
    Against Stich's recommendation that we purge cognitive psychology of content I argue that ascriptions of representational content are both scientifically legitimate and essential to the continuing success of the cognitive sciences. Yet it is not the ordinary folk notion of content that informs many of these sciences, e.g. experimental cognitive psychology, cognitive ethology, and theory of perception. I develop an approach to representation that builds upon a Dretske-style analysis of representa…Read more
  •  8
    Saving the Phenomenal
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 5. 1999.
    Qualitative states are no threat to physicalism. They have a causal effect upon the world in virtue of their qualitative nature. This effect is exploited in biological mechanisms for representing the world. Representation requires differential responsiveness to different perceived properties of things. Qualia are taken to be tagged properties of internal representation models. These properties are properties for-the-organism. Such for-the-organism properties are to be expected in beings which pe…Read more